Transfiguration trip

 A few weeks ago during spring break, I led a small team (three people) on a vision trip to East Asia. It was one of the best trips ever! For security reasons I cant be that specific on details. The whole trip was an amazing experience for me. Even planning and prep before the trip was a good learning tool. I helped make sure everyone had their passports and visas and help teach them a bit about support raising for such a trip. This process really helped me get more disciplined in being organized. A passport and visa process is very slow and annoying. :/ But it all worked out without a hitch. The Lord wanted us to go, and He provided and we went. :) ... On our second flight to our destination I watched 4 movies... thats right, 4!!The flight was 11 hours. I have never been on such a long flight. And it was a Huge plane! A B747. I was geeking out on just the flights.... anyway, upon arrival, I quickly noticed English was no longer a primary language. Luckily we found our way to our contact and introduced each other. We then proceeded into a funny little van. The team we met with that lives there calls them bread vans because they are shaped like loafs of bread. And it was a very tight fit for everyone.... a few minutes into the drive i noticed that driving there in east asia is insane... to put it simply. They cut in and out and honk at everything. No warnings, no blinkers, no traffic law reinforcements... though i was in a panic, i noticed everyone who lives there was perceiving all this driving behavior as normal.... took me a bit but i just let go on my understanding of this and put my trust in the driver.... Hmmm.... How often do we get distracted in the insanity in life and focus on others and forget whose in the drivers seat? I know i do this often and thanks to God Im growing more and more aware of it and trusting in Christ more and more. Its not that i lose trust in Him, its more i tend to avert my attention to finite things. This story just reminded me of this and its a good lesson, but back to the story... An hour and a half later and one trip down an on ramp in reverse (Yes... again, Normal in this area.. lol) we arrived to our hotel. We quickly unloaded our stuff and headed to dinner where we got to meet all the missionaries that serve there and live there. At this point i have been awake for 27 hours straight. So i was tired... very tired.... we ate at a giant round table with about 15 people sitting shoulder to shoulder around it. And in the center there was a giant glass lazy suzan. The waiters come in and put everything on this lazy suzan and we turn it to distribute everything... and yes, this whole week i used nothing but chopsticks. It was actually very fun... we ate, and heard the directer that lives there... on the return to my small room and rock hard hotel bed, i passed out. Thats all I remember.... the first day we toured, hung out and got acquainted to the culture and adjust to the time difference. I bought stuff using the ancient technique of bartering and realized im rather good at it. :) .... so, next day. Monday. I went to a college campus with a local missionary and he showed me around and taught me how to get into conversations there with the students. After this Krystal (she came up in our team from NMSU) and I went to and from this campus everyday, by ourselves and spent our time getting into spiritual conversations all week and gathering contacts for the team that lives there. The students there are so fun. They LOVE talking to foreigners. I have never made so much friends in such a short time. Shared the gospel about a dozen times, went to a karyoake place (KTV) saw amazing ancient history and locations, saw an amazing work the Lord is doing that i was previously unaware of.... at the end of this week i was starting to question if this trip was worth all the time and effort. Felt like it was a waste to come this far and spend all this resources for just 7 days in this country (including travel: 9). but on that last day i met with a guy who really wanted to have lunch with me. So i had lunch with him the day before we left. We talked, and talked.... and talked. We started talking about the gospel and really getting into it. So we moved to a little coffee shop and away from the cafeteria lunch rush and continued talking... and talking. I asked him deep questions that he has never thought through before. And the Lord opened his heart.... He took in every word. Near the end of the conversation, he told me that he wanted this life. He wanted a life devoted to Christ.... right there on the opposite end of the planet, i saw this student get transformed by the holy spirit before my very eyes. :) this trip instantly went from a waste to beyond worth it! That campus went from 3 Christians, to 4. My spring break trip to east asia was full of awe inspiring things but nothing compares to seeing a life touched for the first time by God..... His American name is Leo. So Please pray for his continued thirst for Christ and that he would grow and be a great salt and lite to his country.

A Wonderful Blessin

   First and foremost, I want to say THANK YOU! To all my supporters. Without you all, I would not have had this very incredible and life giving year. Saw three friends come to know Christ, been challenged and have grown immensely in my personal walk with Christ. This semester I've been out of town a lot, and my printer died, had my internet go out for a while, and my awesome desktop computer went down. :/ very frustrating. And it was all hard to fix or work around because I kept going out of town. But despite all that, I have traveled to boulder Colorado for a new staff field training. There I met with about thirty other new staff like myself and was very encouraged. On the first day we split into teams and wrote down what tough stuff is going on in our lives. And then categorized them. Was encouraged because I found that im not the only one having a hard time in specific areas. And the next day we had an amazing devotional and one of the regional staff talked about boundaries and how we can better prioritize our time. (where my main struggles were. Lol) we also had a 24 hr challenge. I was on one of the evangelism teams. We were given a location and some stats on the population of our location, and we got an idea and started planning on how to reach the students in this location with the Gospel. We built a giant chalk board for 12$ and set it up on campus the next day. We wrote a attention grabbing question on it: "How is your love life" we chose this because valentines day was very close. We also had surveys made up that asked relation ship questions and the questions led to whether or not one believe in true unconditional love, and if There was a God that loves unconditionally would they want to know Him?... I shared the gospel with 5 students and got 3 of them plugged into a local bible study. Two people on my team also prayed with a student to receive Christ as their savior. :) this all happened in an hour. One night and one morning of planning and one hour evangalising on campus..... It was amazing to see an impact one can make in a short amount of time. Christ really encouraged and lifted me up that week. There was a lot of other talks and such and heard a cool testimony by Andy Armstrong. On Thursday that week we went snow shoeing up in the mountains in 50 inches of snow. After three miles we got a group picture and prayed and thanked God for the day and each other...... when I got back I felt super recharged. Like I was on a month long vacation.... this was just one awesome week among many this year. God has blessed me and has used all of you supporters to do so. So thank you again. I really really really am thankful for all of you.

Heart Stuff

My hearts been all over lately. There has been a lot of options before me. Basically an infinite set of options. I easly let myself get overwhelmed with the possibillities. Dwelling on which direction i should go. Trying to list pros and cons.... Ive done this before and I ALWAYS come to the same conclution... To stop, shut-up, and listen to Christ. Keep my eyes on my Father. I always feel freaked out on the uncertainty of the future. Yet Christ has never let me down... Im the one doing the letting down. Im still young, and super flexible as far has health and ability. So yeah, I can just about go anywhere and do anything. But all I want is Christ. My Father God has brought me countless blessings, including my abilities and flexibility..... I pray that God will make clear the path He wants me to take, and I know He will. In the mean time I will just focus on the mission before me. Focus on where my feet are now. The lives that are around me now. Everytime I look and dream elswhere I rob my mission feild of my atention and calling. Im not here on accedent. My mission feild is always where my feet are and my tools are whats in my hand at the moment. One of the worst things I can do is to allow is for the Thoughts of figuring out a future to consume me. I know for a fact im in Gods hand. :) no better place. So I must keep my eyes on Christ and keep in prayer and persaverence, what the Lord has in front of me at the moment. If he calls I follow.

Tough break

Since I wrote last I have been to Albuquerque and visited with family for a while during Christmas. Then on the 27^th I headed up to Denver CO for DCC. Cru's Denver Christmas Conference. As staff I made it on the video team. This was my Fifth DCC and my first as staff. On the video team I recorded any short videos they needed and covered the events like the flash mob and Haiti meal packing. On new years eve in particular, I recorded all 1200 students going out on 16^th street and doing the flashmob and using that to get into spiritual conversations afterward. Here is a link to the news coverage of the event : http://www.kdvr.com/videobeta/?watchId=9c2061ea-024a-40cb-9ca1-2e9bc6b25069 .. after that I then recorded about two thousand people doing a wave all the way down 16^th street. Again it was used to get into spiritual conversations. After this second flash mob I recorded the fireworks going off in downtown Denver, then all the student went back into the main ballroom in the hotel and we heard a talk from Scott Nickel then had a very awesome worship till the countdown to new years. Once the new year hit we worshiped and danced and celebrated. This all was recorded as well. After Nick and myself finished recording all we needed to we then went into the video room and edited everything we shot and put it into a re-cap video to be shown first thing that morning. We finished recording everything at 1 a.m. And finished the video at 4 a.m. Went to bed at 4:30 and woke up at 8.... this was one of the tougher nights at DCC for me. But I helped make about 5 videos that were shown in front of 1200 students. And one that didn't get shown. I was in Denver working on the video team from the 27^th to the 2^nd. From the 2^nd to the 4^th was the staff conference. As you probably have an idea, working att dcc was tiring and a lot of work. So the staff conference is for the staff of cru only. Its after all the students head home and its a chance for us to sit in on our own seminars and not have to worry about work and videos.

I was approached by our campus directer recently about leading a spring break trip to east Asia. Cru at NMSU partners with East Asia as a mission field. We go there for spring breaks and have summer project opportunity there as well. So currently they had no one available to help lead the students there for spring break. I prayed about it and decided I will go ahead and lead a group from NMSU. So please pray for me and the students that will be going to east asia to share our faith and learn and experience experience a different culture.

I am currently looking for another part time job and would ask for prayer to find one. Please pray i get more consistent on getting news letters out and my blog updated. I am excited for a new semester and excited to see the Lord continue to work and transform lives at NMSU. Last semester was incredible. Pray this semester is more so.